Summoning the Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

found.”
    â€œIs this a real crime, or just an urban legend?” I said. “It sounds made up.”
    â€œOh, it’s real,” Jupe assured me.
    â€œLook it up on the internet,” Amanda challenged. “Sometimes you can even find the original police photos of the circle of trees, but most of the sites that put them up get pressured by the families to take them down. They closed the park after it happened. Ten years later, they leveled the trees and installed a stone memorial. Families of the kids still bring flowers and candles there on Halloween. Totally spooky.”
    â€œIt’s supposed to be haunted,” Jupe added.
    I rolled my eyes. “You know damn well there’s no such things as ghosts.”
    â€œAre you sure?” Wary eyes slid toward Amanda. I could easily guess his thoughts—he was questioning the fact that she was the only person in the room without a halo.
    â€œShe’s not a savage,” I said. Savages are humans who don’t believe in the existence of Earthbounds, magick, or anything else supernatural. Most humans can’t see halos—with my preternatural sight, I was an exception—but some, like Amanda, take our word for it.
    In Amanda’s case, she had an extra push from an early age. “Ugly Duckling,” she announced with a raised hand, using the Earthbound term for nondemonic offspring. Her mother is human, father Earthbound. And, like other kids born from an Earthbound-human couple, Amanda is 100 percent human: no halo, no knack.
    â€œOh, cool. Anyway, I still think ghosts exist,” Jupe said stubbornly. “My dog sees things that I can’t. None of the Earthbounds at my school have seen ghosts, but everyone says you get a weird feeling around that memorial stone in Sandpiper Park.”
    Amanda nodded. “You need to be careful, Jupe. Don’t go anywhere alone. You could end up like Dustin—one minute you’re hauling out the garbage, the next you’re gone. Poof! Until Halloween’s over, you better make sure you’ve got someone with you at all times.”
    â€œDamn. It’s not safe anywhere .” Under the bar lights, the faint smattering of freckles over Jupe’s nose and cheekbones seemed to darken against his pebble-brown skin.
    â€œThat is, if there’s a Halloween,” Amanda amended. “Some crazy civic watch group is trying to get Halloween festivities canceled. They’re gonna be on the morning news tomorrow, trying to scare the public into supporting them. And not just in La Sirena. Morella, too. They want to cancel the Morella Halloween Parade and ban trick-or-treating throughout the entire county.”
    â€œWhat?” Jupe and Kar Yee said in chorus.
    â€œNo way! I’ve been wanting to go to the city parade for years and Cady promised to take me! They can’t do this! My birthday’s on Halloween!”
    â€œI don’t give a damn bout the parade,” Kar Yee said, “except that it’s bad for business and I’ve just paid for three hundred mummy mugs!”
    â€œNobody’s canceling Halloween, for the love of Pete,” I said.
    â€œThey’d better not.” Kar Yee scowled at Amanda, as if it were her fault for bringing bad news into the bar. Still, she had a point. For demons, Halloween was like St. Paddy’s Day or Cinco de Mayo. Last year we cleared almost $10,000 on Halloween night alone—not to mention the considerable upswing in profits the week before. And that was without the mummy mugs.
    Amanda toyed with the braided hemp bracelets on herwrist. “Whether they cancel it or not, it’s still scary that kids are being taken. I wonder if it’s some copycat crime?”
    Whatever it was, she needed to shut the hell up about it in front of Jupe. Tonight was the first time he’d be spending the night at my house, and I just wanted to have a normal, problem-free weekend with the boy while Lon